Category Archives: lifestyle

Once reserved for the disaffected upper-middle-class millennial, the hipster trend has experienced widespread adoption in design, decorating, eating, dressing, marketing, and huge sales for associated products over the last decade. Fortunately, for some of us, “Brooklyn, where the hipster trend originated, has moved on from the term and the ethos,” and so, hopefully, will the rest of the country—Fortune Magazine is guessing soon in a recent article on investments that maintained valuations of hipster-modulated firms is peaking. Couldn’t happen quickly enough for me.

Hipsters have characterized the intellectuals and the underemployed who embrace a seemingly (but not) low-cost, retro style—ruining the lifestyle of restaurants, pubs, and fashion that I enjoyed before the steampunk absurdities of hipsters. Hipsters have a pretension to an “authentic culture” even while it is a borrowed observation from their daddy’s or granddad’s era. But, unless you’re Actually Frank Sinatra—and you’re not—everyone else looks utterly ridiculous in a fedora. I roll my eyes at you. Without authenticity there is no message or reaction to the widespread society that had in the past stimulated a rebellion of creative energies.

The originators of subcultural authenticity were truly reacting and carrying forward a message and viewpoint. The beatniks and hippies were reacting to society-level characteristics (conformity, political and cultural conservatism), and the punk and grunge folks (Slackers? Generation X?) developed a cultural rebellion, reacting against a perceived stultifying corporate culture (especially through music, though not exclusively). Hipsters today, on the other hand, form around preferences more than broad ideologies.

Hipsters are a more general taste culture, embodying a number of differing critiques of modern society in a more encompassing but less articulated way, perhaps because of the interwebs and Instagram. Rather than a subculture, they are more accurately a “consumer taste culture.” For, although hipster is a trend nominally based upon anti-consumerism, it is more accurately a movement driven by consumerism with a shellack of “anti-,” the exact opposite of authentic subcultures. Hipsters fit perfectly within the values of a large part of the mainstream, the so-called “Bobos” or Bourgeois Bohemians who believe they “self-curate.” Rebellion and societal change come not by activism and agitation but, for the hipster, through the style of things bought.

Don’t misunderstand, my axe-to-grind is not with hipsters’ inauthentic anti-consumerist consumerism. We are all consumers operating under a set of consumerist assumptions validating a chosen lifestyle. So, I, too, am a consumer and a consumerist. I simply don’t like or appreciate the chosen style of the hipsters. And I don’t like it’s spillover effects that have destroyed my preferred lifestyle in most public settings. Hippies weren’t my thing either, though I had older friends that were hippies, but their “style” didn’t bleed over into good restaurants and mass merchandisers.

My preference is for a more future-oriented and more sophisticated and cosmopolitan taste and culture, a sense of luxury and upscale affinity (you don’t need to be rich to do this). I cringe at a hipsterism that tries to eschew modernity with: craft food and spirits, rustic plank flooring and thick wood tables, fedoras, thick-rimmed glasses, Paul Bunyan beards and mustaches, plaid shirts and skinny jeans with cuffs rolled up, converse sneakers, fashionably unkempt hair—everything that has no air of authenticity and implies a fake sensibility of rustic individualism with eyes fixated on past superficial styles to comfort a present that seems to offer no future.

And the restaurants! Can we get our restaurant groups back from this muck? How about some textiles, padding, sound-deadening and color—the Pantone color chart goes beyond browns. And, please, can we fire all the “Mixologists” and rehire those who admit they’re all bartenders? I love a great bartender, but I despise “Mixologists.” I have a lot of “-ists,” and they all went to school forever and busy themselves saving lives, and they charge me a fortune—well, so do the “Mixologists.”

Ah, but one thing that both hipsters and I like is PBR, a cold can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. My go-to beer had always been micro-brewed beers. Then that became so passée as every city in every state had every Millennial and GenXer and Late Bloomer who came to despise the corporate world in which they succeeded turn to the generically hip path of supposedly cool entrepreneurship. Micro-brew became “craft beer,” or rather generic-brew with pseudo-vintage stylings and absurd flavoring. So, for me, it came to be PBR on a hot summer day or, otherwise, a good traditional european pilsner.

Moreover, craft beer/craft drinks became a culture or hobby that anoints the drinker with the credibility of “a foodie,” or the food hipster. They’re part of a faux-agrarian utopia of semi-ethical nonsense, bought by people who enjoy feeling part of an elite community through the products they buy, like fried pig’s ear…locally sourced, of course. I’m so tired of paying high prices for proteins that were previously considered low-grade and fatty or tough. I’m fine with farm-to-table, but I’d like to get more than three baby carrots, twelve kernels of corn, and three halves of brussels sprouts on my plate…you can skip the faux-artistic smear of whatever sauce took three days to make and cost me six dollars (there’s so little, I can’t taste it anyway).

If it’s true it’s all on its way out, then smiles and better living (and eating out in the city) are to follow…I hope.

As for the investor class in hipster-centric stocks, Fortune has one bit of advise that gives hope to a more thriving future-oriented culture: “Get out while you can. And ditch the beard.”

Silvertop — the Reiner-Burchill Residence — was originally commissioned in 1956 by Kenneth Reiner, an entrepreneur who became wealthy with industrial designs for a spring-loaded ladies hair clip and a self-locking lightweight aircraft nut. “Silvertop” is named for its expansive concrete domed ceiling over the living area, which seems to rest on walls of glass, as it peers down upon the Silver Lake Reservoir.

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Focused on technology and engineering, Reiner and Lautner made excellent collaborators. The two set out to accomplish an advanced home design, featuring faucet-less sinks that automatically filled with water, a dining table with a hydraulic pedestal that lowered for cocktails and elevated for meals, a system for heating and cooling that could not be seen or heard (Reiner wanted to feel only the ambient temperatures rise or fall), controls for lights and appliances that were discreetly set into walls and doors jambs, lights that pivot into the ceiling, and electrically-controlled skylights.

Lautner built such novel innovations into the home specifically according to Reiner’s specifications; in the event that the equipment didn’t exist to meet those specifications, Reiner would design, engineer, and manufacturer the necessary parts in his own factory for Lautner.

The two men brought in master structural engineer, Eugene Birnbaum to execute the challenging build with a cantilevered driveway up to the residence and a massive concrete domed ceiling over walls of glass that are slotted into concrete. The City of Los Angeles’ building codes couldn’t keep up with Lautner and Reiner, and the city denied permits for the cantilevered drive… until both men created irrefutable engineering plans and constructed a demonstration project.

The home was originally budgeted at $75,000, but rose to $1,000,000 after many refinements of the design throughout its build. Unfortunately, Reiner never lived in his wondrous home. Due to a lawsuit with his business partner and a divorce, Reiner filed bankruptcy and lost the nearly finished house. The project then sat for several years, while Reiner moved to Long Beach. Associates said the pragmatic Reiner never looked back with regret.

Dr. Philip and Jacklyn Burchill bought the home in 1974. The Burchill’s turned to Lautner to complete the home. The Reiner-Burchill Residence was finally realized in 1976, when the Burchill’s became live-in stewards of the architectural phenomenon until 2014. Mrs. Burchill has decided to sell the home she has maintained with stewardship toward authenticity for 40 years.

The Reiner-Burchill Residence is located at 2138 Micheltorena St in the Moreno Highlands area of Silver Lake and is being offered for $7,500,000.

The 3 bedroom and 4 bathroom design of the main house is made up of a series of interlocking circles, half-circles and ellipsis, creating geometric pattern for which Lautner was known. The infinity pool, a first of its kind, mimics the shape of the roof line. With a massive, arched concrete roof over the living area, the spacious 4,721 of interior living space with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, in proportion to the site on which it is built. “Silvertop” situates on 1.26 acres, comprised of six lots, on the crest of a hill. The home is approached by vehicle up one side of the hill and is exited down the other side of the hill via the cantilevered curved concrete driveway that wraps around a circular guest house, called the Round House, which contains a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and a photography darkroom.

The home consists of three general areas including the living area, sleeping quarters and guest house. From the entry, one passes through an atrium filled with plants and before entering into the expansive light-filled open living space. The sleeping quarters are located somewhat perpendicular to the living area as it bows away from the central living area.

At once familiar and strange, this single family home — House VDV by Graux & Baeyens Architects — is located just outside the town of Ghent, in Destelbergen, Belgium. The land is part of a site where once stood a castle destroyed in WWII. Part of the surrounding wall remains standing and is a silent reminder of this history.

Mid-Century architectural exemplar in Beverly Hills recently came on the market and was designed by sculptor Morris Levine as his personal residence in 1964. According to a 2006 LA Times article, Levine received no formal architectural training, yet designed “at least half a dozen apartment buildings in Southern California,” as well as two churches on an island in the South Pacific where he was stationed during World War II.

The artist lived for forty years in his custom-built Beverly Hills home and passed away in 2004 at age 90. Set on a large, private lot, this hidden 3,480-square-foot retreat lists many original details including terrazzo floors, milled cedar ceilings and walls, custom storage, an open family room, 4 Bedrooms, 4 baths, plus a home office (or 5th bedroom) with a separate entrance, with a large, solar-heated swimmer’s pool, and a landscaped back yard. Great location convenient to downtown Beverly Hills and the Valley. It’s a museum-quality home for the architectural enthusiast.

It’s nice to have successful friends of diverse opinion. When a couple of them are capitalists in the truest sense of the word — i.e., they increase their wealth and incomes by moving their funds around the globe chasing rates of return and potential asset value — are sought after for their investment advise, and have their own financial and economic publications, they also get to disagree with you in the open. In response to “American Middle-Class Now Second-Class To Canada — It Didn’t Have To Be This Way,” I was treated to two alternate views of why I am wrong on specific points.

BENEFITS “RE-COUPLE” THE DECOUPLED PAY & PRODUCTIVITY

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First, one such individual referenced a couple of British economic analysts who had addressed the observation I pointed out in my article when writing:

They show that when you add in benefits to pay and use the same measure of inflation for both pay and productivity, the disconnect between worker pay and productivity goes away, both in the US and Britain.

Their conclusion? “Middle-class stagnation and the ‘decoupling’ of pay and productivity are illusions. Yes, the U.S. economy is in the doldrums, thanks to a variety of factors… But by any sensible measure, most Americans are today better paid and more prosperous than in the past.”

Yes, but this is only a sleight-of-hand trick that these partisans pontificate to advance their own agenda, not because it is meaningfully accurate — it is just technically accurate.

Notably, using the “same measure of inflation for both pay and productivity” is a non-starter as that is not how productivity increases over time, nor is this how it’s measured in real terms. It’s just a mathematical trick to reduce or deflate actual productivity growth to bring it closer in line with stagnant incomes. Monetary inflation and production productivity are not connected in this fashion and doing so is disingenuous.

Truth is that what used to not show up on workers’ ledgers now shows up on their ledgers, and truth is that the component now has less value in real terms than it did prior to reassignment to the workers’ ledgers. The analysts also conflate wealth and incomes inappropriately.

What we are both referencing is the change from defined benefits for workers to defined contributions.

For example, as average life spans increased, the financial pressures exerted on organizational pension systems grew overwhelming and a shift occurred across the private and public sectors from traditional pension programs where one received a defined amount per year after retirement for the balance of their lives to one predicated upon 401k and IRA programs and the like where one received a defined contribution from their organization with no guarantee of what that looked like at retirement.

Several things occurred in this transition. What used to show up as an asset of the organizational pension now was moved to the ledger of the worker as an asset in the form of 401k’s etc. But, that move did not make the worker wealthier in reality nor improve their incomes — both are simply mechanisms through which retirement incomes derived. It just changed where things resided accounting-wise and controlled organizations’ costs.

All things equal, the worker is no better off and no worse… as long as the final retirement income remains unchanged. But all things are not equal, and final incomes are not guaranteed, thus we see today retirees not having the same incomes as those previously based upon traditional retirement pensions. So, there is a net loss of income to the worker overall, even while it appears their wealth increased.

Moreover, these 401k programs require more significant worker contributions to obtain the largest matching employer contributions. This reduces the net-net income of a worker and is not reflected in the aggregate numbers used by these analysts. So their view assigns an asset value to workers that is just an accounting move and inappropriately shows increased wealth while also not including the decreased net-net incomes from the move.

Finally, the “benefits” to which they refer are inclusive of health benefits. As we all know, these costs have increased dramatically over the decades. This alone adds an illusory increased benefit to workers when, in fact, they, too, are paying larger premiums for that health benefit, and worker costs are up dramatically more in deductibles, co-pays, and out-of-pocket maximums… Thus, all contributing to reduced net-net incomes — not the improved financial standing these analysts would have us believe.

The “benefit” appears more significant because of cost inflation yet the worker is no better off and receives the same basic benefit of health care provision they received when the “benefit” appeared at lower cost. Now the worker is made poorer on a net basis by the increased direct costs from the benefit’s cost-sharing mechanism. Moreover, just because the benefit cost grew larger on the employer’s ledger does not mean the income of the worker increased accordingly or that the benefit had more “income value.”

Oy vey!

“TIME COSTS” OF APPLIANCES HEALS ALL WOUNDS

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Second, another individual posited that my position ignores the relative increase in incomes and wealth of workers because improved productivity and globalized production have reduced the “time costs” of attaining and maintaining a middle-class lifestyle. The writer maintains that costs of clothing, major appliances, cars etc. (the lifestyle asset cost of middle-class life) cost less today in terms of how many hours one must work to attain them… and the middle-class person is better off today.

Therefore, if it cost 3000 hours to purchase a standard car back in the 1960’s and now costs 1200 hours to purchase today’s standard car, then the real incomes of average middle-class persons have increased relative to the past. His point is that while this situation may not show up on balance sheets cost-adjusted for inflation, it is a very real phenomenon that means the middle-class is larger and more robust than we believe it to be.

Thus was written:

Bottom Line: The comparison of the “time cost” of appliances over time above confirms what Aparna finds in her analysis – average (and low-income) Americans are much better off today than they were 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago, thanks in large part to the significant reductions in the cost of common household appliances like refrigerators, washers and dryers, and TVs. The reasons for the significant reductions in the cost of appliances include innovation, technology improvements, supply chain efficiencies, increases in productivity and other market-driven efficiencies that drive prices lower and lower year by year, measured in what is most important: our time, and the amount of labor it takes to earn the money to purchase household appliances and other goods and services. As much as we hear about declines in median income, economic stagnation, the disappearance of the middle class, falling real wages, increasing income inequality, the data tell a much different story: The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting richer.

“The poor are getting richer” — Argh!

To be certain, technology has improved such that the “standard” has shifted and provided a lifestyle unimaginable or unattainable in the past; i.e., today, nearly all persons of age have a personal cell phone and internet access (hence access to instant communications); access to music proliferates on numerous mobile devises (not just families able to afford large stereo systems, or further back, their own music chambers); and the list goes on.

As they say, though, all things are relative. And, thus, to say that one has access to “absolutely” more of something now, or to something that never previously existed, or to say that it takes less working time to purchase a particular staple item of the middle-class lifestyle is not to say that they have access to more or better… relative to what their predecessors had relative to their own time. Standards change.

The average middle-class lifestyle requires more and different inputs than that same lifestyle from 1940. It’s not just a car, a refrigerator, and a radio. It is also a middle-class lifestyle relative to itself over time and those levels above it and below in any given year. As society evolves one would hope that the absolute standard improves (i.e., having only 1940 middle-class assets or household items today may mean you are “poor” today and not [or no longer] middle-class), and that is reality.

The middle-class standard and what it costs to maintain that standard have moved upward. This is called progress and something that we should desire for society. The lifestyle of today’s middle-class may appear to have obtained things impossible for the middle-class in times past, but that same cultural standard is relative to its position of the other classes.

If the death rate from cancer devolved back to that from 1960, would it be correct to say that’s acceptable because even then it was better than the survival rate from the 18th century? Of course not. Standards improve, and if the average person in a period can’t maintain their relative position over time in that moving standard, then we have declined as a society. Here is where America rests today. Fewer American families are able to stay in the current standard of the “middle-class.” Moreover, they are not able to stay in the same income percentile on a global basis — reference again this table of percentiles.

Now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, it requires well more than two earners working to equal the wages of a one-income household of 40 years ago. In fact, wages have plummeted so low that a two-income household is now (on average) 15% poorer than a one-income household of 40 years ago.

With the year 2000 as a base, real wages peaked in 1970 at around $20/hour. The average worker today earns $8.50/hour — more than 57% less than real earnings in 1970. Moreover, as the average wage directly determines society’s standard of living, it may accurately be said that the average standard of living in the U.S. has plummeted by more than half over the last 40 years.

Inflation for the last 40 years has hidden the 57% collapse in the standard of living for the average person. Nonetheless, if you’re fortunate enough to be at or successful enough to have earned a place at the top of the income charts, the situation is significantly reversed in your favor. While average American workers have seen their real wages plummet by 57% over the past 40 years, in just 15 years (1992-2007) the 400 wealthiest Americans saw their incomes rise by 700%.

Now we have the complete picture: real wages crumbling steadily lower year after year, decade after decade for “The 99%,” while earnings skyrocket for “The One Percent.” Is that acceptable? I don’t know… is going back to the cancer death rates of 1960 acceptable to you because that’s still better than it was in 1700?

Organic Architecture As Otherworldly Art

Located just outside Palm Springs, the 10-acre Doolittle estate is a rare study of organic architecture, offering a unique peek into the creative partnership between its artistic owners and the architect, Kendrick Bangs Kellogg. It’s now on the market for the first time priced at $3 million.

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The Doolittle home — made of concrete, steel, glass and copper overlays — sits on an irregular slope, nestled up against the hillside. Its foundation, jackhammered into the granite bedrock, is heavy anchored concrete slab. A shield to the harsh outdoors, form-molded concrete walls envelop the 4,643-square-foot home like a cocoon. Twenty-six columns prop up rooflines that fan out like wings. With the San Andreas Fault a short 15 miles away, the structure is reinforced 30 percent beyond California’s highest earthquake standards.

With finishing details in metal, glass and native stone, the structure is a symphony of textures that, combined with the natural light admitted by irregular clerestories, creates the drama of a cathedral.

“It looks like it’s growing out of its environment, like it grew out, mushroom-like,” Menrad said. “It doesn’t disturb the land at all. … It’s part of the landscape, and it’s its home.”

Like the famed architect John Lautner, Kellogg had made a name for himself in organic architecture from the Yen House near San Diego to the Hoshino Wedding Chapel in Japan. Unlike the clean angles of midcentury homes, his designs are rounded, with the look of molded clay.

Bev Doolittle had made a successful career selling paintings of Native American life and snow-flecked landscapes. Jay Doolittle worked as an art agent for his wife. The couple sought an artist architect and eventually tracked Kellogg down from the California Architects Board. They sent him a hand-written letter and photos of their property.

“If you like their work, you let them do it,” said Bev Doolittle, 66. “I didn’t want to hire someone and look over their shoulder.”

“The real work of art is when you put the plans aside and it comes from your gut; that’s what you do on a good piece of art,” said Kellogg.

The home’s otherworldly and museum-quality interior woodwork and metal fixtures were crafted by artist and metalworker John Voggeren, with much of it conceived and fabricated on-site. Sculpted and formed doors, latches, sinks and toilets became objets d’art in their own right. Says Kellogg. “Most people wouldn’t have gone in the way-out directions we went, but the owners almost never stopped us.”

Design began in 1988, and construction began soon afterward. The main structure was finished in 1993. But interior work and tweaks to the doors and windows of the home took the next few years, while the Doolittles lived in a nearby 1,500-square-foot ordinary stucco home. They didn’t fully move in until the early 2000s.

The Doolittles eventually decided to downsize, to live a simpler life. After living in the home for 11 years, they were getting too old for the stairways and rock floors. “It’s really hard to walk away from that. It’s very emotional,” Bev Doolittle said.

I don’t know how long the link will last, but following is the sales video of this magnificent home:

This house is located on the coast, in the coastal way between Zapallar and Papudo, one of the more exclusive and elegant places of summer vacation on the central Chilean littoral.

The entrance to the property is through a garden area above the bedrooms which leads to a glass-enclosed entry hall through which you reach a platform to view the house environ and its relationship to the environment. With the exception of this space, the rest of the house is on the ground level arranged with the intention of facilitating social gatherings and family life.

The house consists of two clearly distinct areas that flow outward to an external central courtyard, which has the distinction of visually linking the internal enclosures with sun throughout the interior of the house. The sea is visible from nearly every part of the house, including all the bedrooms and living and dining rooms.

A curved roof of exposed concrete covers the entry hall, living and dining rooms, and terrace — creating it a unique embiance and creating, in balance with the maritime environment, an atmosphere of tranquility and belonging.

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